Posted
by
timothy
on Wednesday November 24, 2010 @09:47AM
from the how-to-radicalize-americans dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "The Hill reports that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says terrorists will continue to look for US vulnerabilities, making tighter security standards necessary. '[Terrorists] are going to continue to probe the system and try to find a way through,' Napolitano said in an interview with Charlie Rose. 'I think the tighter we get on aviation, we have to also be thinking now about going on to mass transit or to trains or maritime.' Napolitano added she hoped the US could get to a place in the future where Americans would not have to be as guarded against terrorist attacks as they are and that she was actively promoting research into the psychology of how a terrorist becomes radicalized. 'The long-term [question] is, how do we get out of this having to have an ever-increasing security apparatus because of terrorists and a terrorist attack?' says Napolitano. 'I think having a better understanding of what causes someone to become a terrorist will be helpful.'"

I would suggest that, since they're heading toward "universal" security measures, we take a cue from the Old West and require that everyone carry a sidearm. That'll take security down to the individual person, regardless of mode of transportation.

Yes, there will be some irresponsible behavior at first (consider it an initial boundary condition,) but things will sort themselves out once the yahoos have removed each other from the equation.

Lazarus Long: "Armed society is a polite society". While good idea in principle it is not very clear how that will scale to todays population densities. All armed societies known so far had population densities of several orders of magnitude less than today.

In any case, there is a much less radical step that can and should be taken first. The terrorists exist because they have resources. As long as they have money and resources arming everyone will not help. They will simply be better armed with more lethal

Considering that a large part of the NRA's activities are education initiatives oriented around familiarizing people with not only proper firearm use but also the Constitution and the Founding Principles as they related to firearm ownership, I'm thinking that this is a GREAT idea.

Also, It'd REALLY cut down on inner-city crime. Can you imagine a gang trying to terrorize a street full of armed, trained and educated free citizens? It'd end badly. For the gang.

A friend of mine (retired sheriff deputy and Air Force reservist) explained it to me, and I've also heard this from my neighbor, who is a city police officer.

Most police who are on the beat, actually out there in contact with the public heavily favor private gun ownership and "must-issue" CCW laws. Most police chiefs (politicians) are against private ownership of firearms. When you hear talk about proposed ordinances, etc., listen to exactly who is doing the endorsing. If it's a police CHIEFS organization, they want you under their heel. If it's a police OFFICERS association, they want you guarding their backs. In my friend's words, "an armed citizen is a police officer's guardian angel".

Police chiefs absolutely DO NOT speak for the positions of the rank-and-file, and are usually dead opposite on civil rights issues. They claim otherwise, but they lie (and if a cop says "Hey, he doesn't speak for me", guess who's not getting a promotion that year). It's not Officer Friendly who wants a GPS transceiver in your ass and handcuffs on you any time you step out of your house. It's Chief Political Ambition, the one who thinks he's going to be Governor someday, and his hand-picked SWAT elite (who have as bad an attitude about ordinary cops as they have about ordinary citizens).

Armed societies aren't necessarily polite. But there is an immediacy of consequence when the impolite turn violent. When ordinary citizens are armed, there is a built-in limit as to how far a violent criminal act can go unchecked.

The problem, in a dense area, is that sometimes you miss, and then there's something behind whatever you missed

Which also is an argument against police carrying guns; cops miss too.

We've decided as a society that the possibility of a missed shot against a deadly criminal act is acceptable risk, thus urban police are armed. The thing is, the threat that cops face is identical to the threat

But there is an immediacy of consequence when the impolite turn violent. When ordinary citizens are armed, there is a built-in limit as to how far a violent criminal act can go unchecked.

Or not. My brother lives in Brazil - it is amazing just how much blue-on-blue gun crime there is between police officers, as coffee-fueled arguments escalate into gunfights - let alone the heavy weaponry like rocket launchers that the drug gangs, who are so pervasive as to practically be the lower-class government, have.

tl;dr: guns don't make an impolite society polite. They make a walk down the street to the shopping mall into an exciting bullet-dodging adventure.

A sign asking visitors to check their guns is only prudent if the visitors are carrying guns.

Did you actually read the page you linked to?

On entering the main street, leading north and opposite the bridge on the river, somebody of our party in the rear turned his gun loose into the air. The Rebel and I were riding in the lead, and at the clattering of hoofs and shooting behind us, our horses started on the run, the shooting by this time having become general. At the second street crossing, I noticed a rope of fire belching from a Winchester in the doorway of a store building. There was no doubt in my mind but we were the object of the manipulator of that carbine, and as we reached the next cross street, a man kneeling in the shadow of a building opened fire on s with a six-shooter. Priest reined in his horse, and not having wasted cartridges in the open-air shooting, returned the compliment until he emptied his gun. By this time every officer in the town was throwing lead after us, some of which cried a little too close for comfort. When there was no longer any shooting on our flanks, we turned into a cross street and soon left the lead behind us.

Terrorists can easily target the areas where people are queuing to be scanned. I demand that everybody be scanned and frisked before entering the scanning area. It's the only way to safeguard the American public.

That is a false dichotomy. There are plenty of other options, including simply learning to accept reasonable levels of risk while traveling rather than allow a nebulous group of criminals to cheaply provoke us into destroying our own society for them in the name of "security".

First, 99.9% is an incredible exaggeration. Obviously there was a period of panic right after the event, but even at its worst point I think more than 0.1% of the adult population recognized that it is manifestly impossible to prevent all attacks, even if we were willing to go so far as to impose full martial law in every public place—and even more would not be willing to go that far even if it were actually effective in stopping all attacks.

Exaggeration aside, however, if the DHS is basing its policies on (outdated) panic-driven poll results without regard to cost, liberty, or the reality that some attacks will get through, whatever they may do, then that is just one more example of the many things wrong with the DHS. Just because they want one concession or the other doesn't mean we have to give them either.

"Exaggeration aside, however, if the DHS is basing its policies on (outdated) panic-driven poll results without regard to cost, liberty, or the reality that some attacks will get through, whatever they may do, then that is just one more example of the many things wrong with the DHS."

I have no idea if DHS believes the scanners and pat downs are really effective. I'm not sure which answer would be worse. But it is certainly true that one of the primary reasons for implementation of the new policies is CYA.

Profiling doesn't really involve spying though. It's a behavioral analysis done through observation of how you answer a set of probing questions.

If your answers and behavior while answering fit the profile of a person who is nervous or agitated, then you are pulled aside for a more thorough analysis and search.

There's more to it than that, of course, but none of it involves spying on American citizens or the massive 4th Amendment violations that the TSA is currently up to it's blue-gloved wrists in.

Please keep in mind that El Al has been employing this type of profiling for DECADES and has had not a single terrorist attack yet, despite easily being the single biggest global target for Islamic terrorism.

Israeli style profiling is demonstrably effective, and is generally regarded among those in the global security community as the gold standard to model after. Yet we are doing the EXACT OPPOSITE of what they are doing.

Why?

Well, since the former head of DHS is now a highly paid consultant to the ONLY company that makes these machines, and many politicians and govt. functionaries have either power or financial gain involved in reducing the freedoms of the American people and turning us all into obedient sheeple, perchance payoffs and corruption have something to do with it?

No, the direction they're heading is to broaden it from securing transportation to securing public places. Hijacking of airplanes is nothing new to the 21st century; people have been doing it for decades, but passengers didn't have to undergo the kind of scan/rape we endure now to get on planes in those days because no one had tried turning a passenger plane into a weapon capable of killing thousands. The FAA was only concerned about planes being diverted by a passenger who wanted to go somewhere, or maybe being blown up by a remote saboteur.... not being used as hand-piloted missiles. That's the underlying justification for these invasive searches: to protect the public from large-scale killing.

So when (not if) someone in the US commits a suicide bombing in a crowded public place like an airport or train station or sporting event or political rally, the authorities will start screening people just as invasively to get into those as well. They've already started with metal detectors and bag searches in some of these places, and it's just going to get worse. Step by step, we're moving toward becoming a search-and-surveillance society, in which the Fourth Amendment might keep you secure from search and seizure in your home (because that public-safety rationale doesn't apply there), but not when you venture out into public places.

(And it's all to treat the symptoms, rather than addressing the root causes of the disease.)

Oh, Janet! Sure we can take over boats and wreck them using mere boxcutters and explosives. I'm sure you've seen the movie Speed.

But let me give you a hint. Trains? Didn't you watch old cartoons as a kid? When we want to derail them, we don't need to be on them, and if we are, we have wasted some kamikaze brothers who could have better employed elsewhere.

I also think understanding what causes someone to become a terrorist will be helpful.

the whole 'we have become our enemy' theme rings true. I grew up in the 60's in the US and the treatment of US citizens in this way by fellow US citizens (tsa) is something we'd imagine those 'dirty commies' would do - but that would NEVER happen here in the US. the US means freedom. that would not happen here.

guess what - we are being conditioned and paralized by fear. everything that those that came before us fought for, we are gladly surrendering and at a rapid rate, too.

most here in this forum see this. we are very small and not usually powerful or influential. will enough of the people that matter (sorry, I'm also one that does not matter) catch on and demand this 'citizen frisk' style be immediately and forever suspended?

the education system needs to also tell people that its ok to live in a less than 100% safe society and that stuff happens and that's just how a free society is. if we can accept that crazy people will do damage and there is not a thing you can do to stop 100% of it, then we will have our 'leaders' stop with the CYA moves, which is ALl the tsa is about. its about blame shifting and cover-your-ass. all those in power pretty much know the Theater is just for show, but they are being asked by the scared soccer moms of the world to make us 100% safe and this is their only reply. if we can get the soccer moms to stop asking for 100% and accept reality for what it is, then we can maybe go back to normal again?

admit that we have generated an out-of-hand reasonse to a problem and that we're self-correcting. but we can't even get to that step.

Seriously, is everyone who works for "Homeland Security" an idiot? Is there some maximum IQ you can have before you're unqualified?

Attacking a bus is completely different than attacking a plane.Even if these measure were useful in defending a plane (which they are not) they wouldn't apply to a bus because any terrorist WOULD NOT GO THROUGH THEM and would, instead, drive next to the bus and blow up his car.

MAYBE they'd be useful in a subway. As long as the train never left the tunnels and all the access routes were sealed shut.

Which still leave the malls and the after Thanksgiving crowds there.

And that doesn't even cover things like a couple of snipers just shooting people in DC.

Trains? Didn't you watch old cartoons as a kid? When we want to derail them, we don't need to be on them, and if we are, we have wasted some kamikaze brothers who could have better employed elsewhere.

I'm old enough to have met people who fought in the resistance against the Nazis in WWII.

One of their favorite targets was troop trains. The Germans had a great railroad system.

All they had to do was remove the spikes, and the train would be derailed. On a winding mountain road, it might go tumbling off the cliff.

One guy said that they would remove the spikes, fill the hole with gasoline, and replace the spikes, so that it would explode when the train rolled over it. I couldn't figure out how that would work, but he killed 600 Nazis.

I'm glad the war is over, and the Germans have returned to sensible things, like solar power and molecular biology.

Exactly! All you need is a torch and a busy track near a school or government building. You'd be amazed what trains carry; especially non-passenger trains. Simply derail the wrong train near a city is enough to close down some cities for days or weeks. Not to mention, the associated death toll, both directly and indirectly.

And that's completely ignoring that the heart of the entire US economy travels on trains. It can take weeks to clear and verify a track after an accident. If you shutdown enough tracks, you've parallelized the entire economy at worst. At best the price of goods goes through the roof as goods are shifted to more expensive transport; truck and ship (sea and river).

Seriously, we are spending tons of money to do absolutely nothing and it doesn't even protect the largest, most important segment of our economy.

But let me give you a hint. Trains? Didn't you watch old cartoons as a kid? When we want to derail them, we don't need to be on them, and if we are, we have wasted some kamikaze brothers who could have better employed elsewhere.

The problem with trains being soft targets is that they take specific paths at predetermined times. Because it's too expensive to guard the millions of miles of railway track from terrorists, I propose, for security's sake, we randomize the train departure times and destinations and implement random delays and schedule changes en route.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority of Boston and New England Amtrak have had these security measures for years and, as one can infer from the lack of terrorist incidents, they have clearly presented a most difficult target. Note that when the 9/11 attackers left Boston, they chose to fly rather than take the train.

Think about it for a bit. Israel has been trying to prevent terrorism since forever now, and they even have a fairly cocky attitude about how hardcore they are about it. Has it worked? NOPE. Show of hands here - anyone think it's about to work? Hezbollah about to cave, tell Israel that they can do whatever they want?

The fact is that civilization is a fairly fragile thing. Once you've pissed someone off enough that they are willing to sacrific

People don't like that answer. I've actually had a friend of mine freak out at me because I explained something very similar, but on a personal level. The only reason anyone [normal, non high-profile] isn't dead is because no one has decided they need to die. Tell me, if someone decides you need killing but you don't know that, what's to stop them from walking up behind you with a garrote? Braining you with a rock? Using a large stick to beat you? Sharpening a stick with previously mentioned rock and impaling you? Or just wrapping their hands around your neck until you stop twitching? Absolutely nothing, and that's without getting into "modern" tools with metals, chemicals, and other force-enhancing tech. She didn't particularly like the idea that her existence depends entirely on the fragile sanity and civilized mindset of everyone else in her environment.

The sooner everyone realizes you can't completely control the risk without destroying your life anyway the sooner we can get on with living. Life involves risk, you can't prevent everything, and you will die eventually; learn to live so life means something in case you do expire earlier than expected!

No offense, but this is completely speculative, and seems to ignore the fact that these body scanners can cost up to and exceeding $100,000 [epic.org], and that's not even including the costs of hiring and maintaining staff to manage the machines. I personally find it hysterical that anybody would think we'd see these in the _many_ train stations out there in even the distant future. Toss in buses as well, and you're quickly approaching $1M just to "secure" one bus/train route.

As it stands, the cost of these technologies is far too great to be presently implemented at this level. Although, if the TSA is indicative of the average IQ required to operate these machines, even the morons who work for our fabulous local CTA here in Chicago might be able to run these things.

And let's not forget "road-side bombs." I'm not sure we fully appreciate how dangerous things are in Afghanistan and Iraq, so let's just bring the whole frikken war back home so everyone can experience a little bit of it.

I think it's important to always remember that the reason the "terrorists" are interested in attacking US targets isn't because they "hate our freedom" it's because we are affecting their freedoms and assaulting their ideals with our imperialism. And no, I don't mean "because we are imper

it's because we are affecting their freedoms and assaulting their ideals with our imperialism

Give me a break. One of OBL's grievances against the United States was the fact that we had troops in the Holy Land. The fact that they were there at the invitation of the Government with the mission of protecting the Holy Land from Iraq didn't matter to him.

We could pull out of the Middle East tomorrow and return to a 1930s era isolationism and there would still be some extremist nutjob that would find a reason to hate us. That's just the way the world works.

So, in your universe, propping up the Saudi government doesn't count as imperialism?

Every single step in imperialism always looks entirely sane and just. (Usually because the unjust steps are classified.)

And we can't seem to understand how people have come to the conclusion that we have conquered them. Sure, we're running around with guns killing the rebels at the request of the government we installed in the first place, but they have FREEDOM(TM)!

We could pull out of the Middle East tomorrow and return to a 1930s era isolationism

Could we? Why the FUCK don't we, then?

and there would still be some extremist nutjob that would find a reason to hate us.

The problem isn't who hates us, the problem is how many people and what sort of recruitment they can do.

On 9/11, 19 people killed about three thousand...so each person killed 150, although that was partially absurd luck on their part.

But let's assume that it's still possible to blow up airplanes, and only takes two people to do that plot, so each person can still kill 150 people.

But the problem isn't the 150 people. There is functionally no way to stop that if the person is willing to die. You could fricking mix ammonia and bleach at a high school talent show and kill 150 many people which chlorine gas

It's the 19 people willing to kill and give their life to do so that many that's the problem.

And it's not really being an 'extremist nutjob' to hate the US because they blew up your house and killed your family. That's just perfectly normal hatred.

Also, the deaths-per-terrorist frequency distribution is uneven; the two planes that hit the towers did much, much more killing than the other two planes.

Yeah, and it's something that wouldn't happen anymore with airplanes.

Strictly speaking though, the entire thing was incredibly inefficient at killing people. Even if the ratio was closer to 1 terrorist per 300 murders, that's pretty easy to pull off with, I dunno, a movie theater on Harry Potter opening night.

Perfectly normal hatred would be hating the very specific people who blew up your house and family, hating everyone who shares the same race or nationality as the people who blew up your house and family is what defines an "extremist nutjob".

So when a soldier, in the employ of an army, does something that he was ordered to that seriously harms you...your problem should be with that soldier? Really?

Not the people who gave him those orders, which are, ultimately, the people of the United States?

I can see how some people would emotionally think that way, but that's the emotional thinking, the logical thinking, the non-nutjob thinking, is 'If he hadn't done that the guy next to him would have. The people giving the orders are the problem.'

As was pretty easy to figure out, I was responding to 'We could pull out of the Middle East tomorrow and return to a 1930s era isolationism and there would still be some extremist nutjob that would find a reason to hate us.'

Ergo, I was talking about the 'extremist nutjobs' we left behind in the Middle East. Many of whom we did blow up their house and kill their family.

No one was talking about existing terrorists at all. Strictly speaking, no one was talking about terrorists at all, at least not in that se

A truly erroneous hard-left outlook, but stupidity is fitting given your account name. Jihadists are very clear about their intentions. It has almost nothing to do with forcing our economies on them. The primary driver of jihad is the desire to subjugate the entire world to the dictates of Islamic dictatorship. Radical Muslims view the non-Muslim controlled parts of the globe as the world they are at war with, and the war they are waging is to impose their religion on all non-Muslims. Other justifications for jihad are at best secondary motivators. And shame on you for whitewashing and apologizing for the unquestionably evil, outrageously heinous campaign of misery and death waged by radical Islam.

A truly erroneous hard-right outlook, but stupidity is fitting given your account name. Imperialists are very clear about their intentions. It has almost nothing to do with forcing our social democracies on them. The primary driver of imperialism is the desire to subjugate the entire world to the dictates of American hegemony. Radical imperialists view the non-American controlled parts of the globe as the world they are at war with, and the war they are waging is to impose their empire on all non-Americans. Other justifications for imperialism are at best secondary motivators. And shame on you for whitewashing and apologizing for the unquestionably evil, outrageously heinous campaign of misery and death waged by radical Imperialism.

I had a similar thought, a minesweeper in effect, but then I thought: these are people willing to throw their lives away for a cause. What's going to stop them ramming a truck into the train if they really want to? Besides, unless the trains are escorted, it won't even matter that they have to be on site. Pick a remote spot, wait for the sweeper to go past, back the truck onto the tracks and jump out into the waiting getaway vehicle. The people on the train certainly aren't going to be in any shape to stop you.

"Have an unmanned sweeper vehicle run down the track a little ahead of the train,..."

I'm a railway dispatcher since 1973 and I'm enjoying reading the remarks here, very funny.

People get their cars stuck on the rail, drunks driving their cars _on_ the track, suicidal morons waiting to get overrun with or without their cars, people walking their dogs on the tracks, throwing stuff from bridges onto the tracks or trains _every_ fucking day!

I don't care about the financial cost of these machines. I care about the privacy and liberty costs of these machines. They don't make us safer, they don't protect us and we end up giving up freedoms and privacy for absolutely nothing.

But if these machine do cost 100K each (doesn't sound bad for a certified x-ray machine), then how much does Janet Napolitano get per machine?

It's completely absurd. Anyone with half a brain can think of at least half a dozen reasons why they can't secure trains this way.

The average Amtrak station is a double wide about 100 feet of the tracks. They would have to build real thousands of real train stations at a cost of tens of billions of dollars.

Unlike planes, which leave the airport up in the air, trains leave the station on the ground. So all someone has to do to get around security is to walk along the tracks.

There has never been even one single case of a terrorist boarding any train in the United States with the intent to cause it harm. There has never even been intelligence suggesting that this is a credible threat.

The easiest, safest, and most effective way to target a train is not to target the trains themselves, but rather the approximately 233,000 miles of unsecured railroad tracks. If we want to make it at least as secure as the U.S. Mexico border fence (with fences along both sides of every track), it would cost approximately 1.8 Trillion dollars, or about 14% of the total U.S. national debt.

That's not counting the tens of trillions of dollars you would have to spend on adding bridges at every railroad crossing in the nation to allow cars to go over the fences.

In short, Ms. Napolitano clearly has not thought this through. Either that or she has thought it through and she's just the biggest idiot on the face of the planet. With political appointees, it's often hard to say. Either way, it's time to defund the TSA and Homeland Security. They're the biggest laughingstock of the security world since Windows XP.

There has never been even one single case of a terrorist boarding any train in the United States with the intent to cause it harm. There has never even been intelligence suggesting that this is a credible threat.

Even coming from a country where they did attack the trains (well, the subway system [wikipedia.org]), it still sounds like a bad idea, for all of the other reasons you listed, plus, assuming you could ever make this 100% (or close enough) secure, what's next? Attacks at sporting events? Attacks on people in large offices? Schools? The terrorists don't have a playbook, they can make it up as they go along, trying to react to that is just going to cost a fortune and make everyone's lives hell.

There has never been even one single case of a terrorist boarding any train in the United States with the intent to cause it harm. There has never even been intelligence suggesting that this is a credible threat.

To me, that's the key item. There are countless ways that terrorist can cause lots of damage and death in places where security is currently minimal or nonexistent, yet for some odd reason that doesn't happen much. Despite the fact we keep beefing up airport security, they continue to attack this one target instead of all the other easier targets. We know that these days a terrorist is not going to be able to take control of a plane, so that can't be a reason. So why do they continue to attack planes? The o

Maybe Janet got a offer to join the last Homeland Security secretary's comany the Chertoff Group [boston.com]. The Company that produces the body scanners, with a no-bid contract from the government. Maybe Janet needs to keep the scam growing to profit once she is out of government.

One must wonder, since most bus stops are just a bench with a sign, where will they put the scanners and who is going to man them. Of course, if it doesn't make sense to screen city bus passengers, why should metro rail passengers be scanned?

The nice thing about trains is that you can't fly them in to buildings no matter how hard you try.

At this rate, expect to have it under 50% by early December. People are rapidly become educated about the absurdity, invasiveness, high cost, lack of security, lack of privacy, and radiation of this procedure.

So overall it has support from those surveyed, but 45% are in the middle. The survey also asks people how much they fly, so I'd be interested to see how frequency of flying correlates with support of the scanners. I can see that if you fly once a year, you might not care too much. If you get frisked every week in your suit and tie, you may not be so supportive.

The pat-down is more polarized, with 48% saying it's justified, and 50% saying it's not.

70% support profiling

The top 3 criteria for profiling were Personal Behavior, Travel History, and Nationality. For Race and Religion, more people opposed it than supported it, which is refreshing, although there was more support than I would like (40%)

Those of us paying attention knew exactly what he was, but voting for McCain/Palin was simply out of the question.

You knew he was somebody who would attempt to increase the power of government at the expense of personal liberty, who would govern arbitrarily and you voted for him anyway?
McCain probably wouldn't have done anything particularly good, but I can't imagine him systematically dismantling civil liberties and the economy. And if you voted against him because of Palin, why would you choose someone you knew would be a bad President to avoid having a bad Vice President (who has almost no power and in a McCain Adm

You know what, in the UK for about 20 years the Liberal Democrats were a joke party. It was inconceivable that they'd actually be in power, they were in the middle between a hard-right (Tory, about the same level as your Democrats) and a left-wing party (Labour, the US doesn't have an equivalent - these people claimed they wanted more for the common-man, believe it or not).

Today, the Liberals are sharing power with a Tory government, after Labour reneged on so many promises that the voters got rid of the

No, it's not. There are two parties that happen to be more effective than anybody else at getting votes but there is nothing in the US Constitution or Federal/State laws that define this country as a two-party state.

What you say is technically correct, but you're missing the point.

Right now, there are two parties that effectively control the U.S. political scene. Because of this, back in the 2008 election, it was a sure thing, even before the election started, that the winner would belong to either on

I knew she was this stupid when it comes to security. She was good at education and better at the budget than some, but her border security policy was awful and never did jack shit towards actually keeping anyone safe. Why she was selected for this, of all jobs, is beyond me. As I said, she could have been good at something else like Secretary of Education, but Homeland Security is possibly the worst possible position for her. She just has no grasp of what makes things secure (hint: it's not a fence/scanning machines).

You KNOW why she was selected. She was a woman who backed Obama over Hilary, and from a state with an active international border, with at least as much weight placed on the former as the latter.

It's really all political.

What I find so amazing about this is the Obama administration's willingness to embrace such naked totalitarian behavior without so much as a flinch, although Pistole's tone and manner are only making the problem worse. They need a kinder, gentler voice selling this nonsense, Pistole is th

'I think having a better understanding of what causes someone to become a terrorist will be helpful.'

Really? It took you ten years to realize this?Hint: being sold by your neighbor to the CIA, blindfolding, extraditing, torture, more flying, Guantanamo Bay, ten years of lock-down will turn ANYBODY and his brother into a so-called "terrorist".

Anonymous@DHS:"The terminology contained within the reported memo is indeed troubling. It labels any person who “interferes” with TSA airport security screening procedure protocol and operations by actively objecting to the established screening process, “including but not limited to the anticipated national opt-out day” as a “domestic extremist.” The label is then broadened to include “any person, group or alternative media source” that actively objects to, causes others to object to, supports and/or elicits support for anyone who engages in such travel disruptions at U.S. airports in response to the enhanced security procedures."

"Yeah, about the TSA. We're ending it. Same with Homeland Security. Folks, the simple truth of the matter is there's no possible way to secure ourselves against all risk. I think we can all agree that the Soviet Union operated as a police state none of us would want to live in and even with all that security, they still had serial killers. China routinely uses the death penalty for drug smugglers and yet they still have a drug problem.

"The trappings of the police state represented by the TSA does not deter terrorists, it represents the illusion that government is doing something. It also is making a great deal of money for people who provide goods and services for the paranoia industry.

"The fact of the matter is that we will get hit again. We don't know by who, we don't know where, we don't know when, but it'll happen. You know what, though? We're strong. We can take whatever they dish out. They could fly ten more planes into ten more buildings, they could set off a nuclear device in downtown New York. No, we won't like it. But we'll crawl out from under the rubble and rebuild. Living as we have before, uncowed, unbowed, not conceding a goddamn thing to terrorists, that's middle finger resolutely extended right back at them. It says 'If that's all you've got, we've got nothing to worry about.'

"What we're no longer going to do is live our lives looking over our shoulder, jumping at shadows, giving up the way we live our lives because someone has rattled us, because we've lost our nerve, because we've been beaten.

"Oh, and while we're on the topic, Middle Eastern nuts wouldn't have so much money to finance terror attacks if we weren't giving it to them for the goddamn oil. They wouldn't even have a reason to attack us if we weren't involved in their politics in the first place. Our post-oil energy policy is also our anti-terror policy."

"Oh, and while we're on the topic, Middle Eastern nuts wouldn't have so much money to finance terror attacks if we weren't giving it to them for the goddamn oil. They wouldn't even have a reason to attack us if we weren't involved in their politics in the first place. Our post-oil energy policy is also our anti-terror policy."

While we're on the topic, most of our oil comes from Canada, South America, and yes, our very own US of A. It's a common misconception that we rely on the middle east for "most" or all of our oil, and you see it perpetuated every time Obama and other politicians talk about "our foreign dependence".

Our foreign policy was/is heavily influenced by communism, by the way...that's at least half the reason we got ourselves into such a mess. It wasn't just "oil", it was "commies getting oil."

While we're on the topic, most of our oil comes from Canada, South America, and yes, our very own US of A. It's a common misconception that we rely on the middle east for "most" or all of our oil, and you see it perpetuated every time Obama and other politicians talk about "our foreign dependence".

Oil's pretty fungible. Where a specific barrel comes from is largely irrelevant. OPEC still manages to pretty effectively control the price of oil sold to the US without the US sourcing that much from OPEC.

Sure, "most" of our oil is sourced within North America. But some very significant fraction comes from elsewhere. Around 40% of our consumption is from domestic sources, another 15-20% is from elsewhere in North America. The rest comes from elsewhere in the world - some from stable, friendly places (Norway, the UK), some from relatively friendly but not so stable places (e.g. Nigeria), and some from not-so-friendly but relatively stable places (e.g. Venezuela), and some from places that are both unstable an

Man I would love to see the reaction on Fox if Obama did something like that. Just how fast can they switch from "Obama invading your rights" to "Obama making you vulnerable to terrorists" without causing cognitive dissonance in their audience. Actually, I'm not sure their audience is capable of cognitive dissonance.

Lessee...thinking, reasoning, remembering. Strikes one, two, and three. Fox News aficianados don't think or reason -- they are sponges soaking up their pundits' mots du jour and regurgitating them. There's about as much cognitive activity involved their as there is in a trained parrot.

Thanks for sharing your preconceived notions AC. Personally, I'm glad the small government types are *FINALLY* getting outraged over the violations of our Constitutional rights. I just wish they'd be more consistent about it. If I believed the Tea Partiers actually gave a shit about personal liberties (for everyone, and not just when it affects them), I'd be right there with them.

This is just a fundamental concept of basic property rights -- you OWN yourself, therefore you should be able to do whatever the hell you want with yourself. Same with the money in your wallet. It's YOURS, not mine (not even secondhand via taxes).

I can respect a basic property rights argument but will usually run into disagreement with big and small L libertarians when it comes to impact. "Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins." A property rights argument might begin with "I can dump oil on my land because it's my property." But the runoff doesn't stop at your property line. It's shared by your neighbors.

So someone has property and it turns out to be a vital habitat for the yellow-bellied snail-darter. The EPA says it can't be deve

is that those who get cancer from radiation exposure if these body scanners are more widely used, will be a number orders of magnitude greater than those killed by terrorists, if we had no security at all

There's plenty of controversy about the new full body scanners that the TSA is installing at airports, and plenty more about the way some TSA agents are handling those that choose to opt out.

The heart of the matter comes from the fact that the TSA often doesn't understand that it is in show business, not security business. A rational look at the threats facing travelers would indicate that intense scrutiny of a four ounce jar of mouthwash or aggressive frisking of a child is a misplaced use of resources. If the goal is to find dangerous items in cargo or track down Stinger missiles, this isn't going to help.

The challenge with #1 is that if people believe they're going to get groped, or get cancer, or have to wait in line even longer on Thanksgiving, they cease to be on your side. Particularly once they realize how irrational it is to try to stop a threat after it's already been perpetrated. (Imagine the havoc if someone had a brassiere-based weapon...)

And the challenge of #2 is that the cost of raising the bar gets higher and higher.

Smart marketers know how to pivot. I think it's time to do that. Start marketing the idea that flying is safe, like driving, but it's not perfect, like driving. If someone is crazy enough to hurt themselves or spend their life in jail, we're not going to stop them, and even if we did, they'd just cause havoc somewhere else. So instead of spending billions of dollars a year in time and money pretending, let's just get back to work.

Exactly two things have made airline travel safer since 9/11: reinforcement of cockpit doors, and passengers who now know that they may have to fight back. Everything else -- Secure Flight and Trusted Traveler included -- is security theater. We would all be a lot safer if, instead, we implemented enhanced baggage security -- both ensuring that a passenger's bags don't fly unless he does, and explosives screening for all baggage -- as well as background checks and increased screening for airport employees.Then we could take all the money we save and apply it to intelligence, investigation and emergency response. These are security measures that pay dividends regardless of what the terrorists are planning next, whether it's the movie plot threat of the moment, or something entirely different.

I used to tear up with pride when I heard the national anthem, or Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA". The final line of the anthem, "the land of the free and the home of the brave", and Greenwood's line that "the flag still stands for freedom, and they can't take that away", are both now lies. We are not the land of the free, the flag doesn't stand for freedom, they did take it away, but most of all we are no longer the home of the brave. We are a nation of cowards, so afraid of the boogeyman of terrorism we are willing to sacrifice not just our rights but our very dignity, all in the forlorn hope of being safe.

The TSA has not stopped a single terrorist in the 9 years of its operation. The full-body scanners would not have detected any of the bomb plots of the last few years, including last year's Captain Underpants. It is a complete and total waste of time and money, and serves no purpose beyond enriching a handful of politically connected individuals.

Enough is enough. It's time we all refuse to subject ourselves to any security measures until sanity is restored. Don't show your ID at the airport, don't go through the metal detectors, don't even submit your carry ons for X-Ray inspection. The pendulum has swung too far in one direction, it is time we push it back where it belongs.

If everyone were to refuse to submit to these intrusions, they would be gone in a matter of days. The "powerful" who think themselves our masters are neither, and in their hearts they know it. The people still have the power in this country to stand up for what's right.

Invade their country. (Check)Bomb their country. (Check)Kill thousands of their innocent civilians, men women and children. (Check)Show no remorse for these acts. Indeed, be proud of them, and say the victims had it coming. (Check)Tell the survivors that they are going to get the same. (Check)

How much research do you need? I thought America had drawn up this five-point-plan years ago.

It is extremely condescending for the government to assume that we're incapable of action in the face of adversity. We have proven time and again that this is not the case! We will not just stand around wringing our hands and bleating for them to come protect us when something bad happens.

The TSA seems to believe that they can protect us from every little threat, but they're responding to the last threat from our enemies, not the next one. They are the hysterical ones, jumping through every little hoop that our enemies set up. Their behavior is increasingly bizarre and insane. None of the people whose privacy they invade beyond reason will be a threat! If an actual threat emerges it will no doubt come down to us, the very people that the TSA holds in such contempt, the very people they fear, to stop it.

In China, they already have pre-nudie-scanner airport-like security at the train stations - at least for the longer distance trains like Hong Kong to Guangzhou or to Shenzhen. They don't have these in the Guangzhou Metro yet, though. I've seen these at long distance bus stations too (HK to GZ again, for example).
They even have them at the entrances to certain museums, the Guangzhou Science Center (which is an amazing science museum), and other similar attractions. No taking off your shoes, though. You just pass your bags through the x-ray machine and walk through the metal detector just like at an airport, but no metal-detector wand and pat-down like at the airports.

..do you find scanners on train stations, and Europe had many train attacks.

The reason might be, as others pointed out, that they would be completely useless. But then again, the US government has to support the failing car industry. And what better way of doing that, than to molest people, who want to use "unnatural" (public) forms of transportation.

the difference with planes is that you can slam them into any target you wish. they're essentially piloted cruise missiles.
trains and buses and metro stations are different. while you can blow them up, kill people on them or whatever you can't slam them into an arbitrary target. in that respect a train and the metro are no different than your local mall or walmart, downtown or whatever. and i can't imagine we're going to body scan people going into walmart or any other location where there are lots of people in one place.
or maybe we are? hope not.

Trucks and cars are even easier to load with explosives and pilot into a target, as they have been. Remember Lebanon? The first World Trade Center Bombing? Oklahoma City?Also, pilots figured out how to thwart hijackers right after 9/11: use the lock that was already on the cabin door. A 9/11 style attack will never happen again, the passengers won't allow it and the pilot won't open the door.

Let's see. They live under an oppressive government / invading force. They find themselves ecnomically fucked with no hope of advancing themselves or their family. They find their way of life and/or religion maligned as evil. Then one day they decide, "Fuck it. My life can't be any worse. Maybe I can make things better for the next generation by fighting what has fucked up my generation."

That's what they tell you get in radiation. There is a very big lack of 3rd party oversight and data to support the claim. This is really the first use of x-rays without some kind of medical benefit. And across the whole population.

Even worse are the van scanners. They are designed to see inside a steel shipping container, so no so soft x-rays, and quite a lot higher dosage. And they just need to drive past your house.

But unlike the 3 minutes at 30,000 feet, the radiation is lower power, designed to scatter off your skin.

That means that 3 minutes a 30,000 feet your entire body (insides included) is hit with the same amount of power: in a scanner only your surface area (skin) is hit with 3 minutes of radiation exposure at 30,000 feet in just under two seconds.

Assuming that the radiation needs to penetrate 1 mm or less to scatter, an average male's body surface area is 1.9 m^2 (165 lbs 5'9") making an exposure area of 0.0019 m^3

Likewise an average male weights about 75 kg (165 pounds) with an average conversion factor of 1.015 kg/l coming with a rough value of 70 l for an average male's volume.

A little math and you find out that (0.0019/70) the entire in machine dose is hitting only 1/36842 of your body, or about 0.0027% of your body.

Normalizing for exposure per second E = Rate(at 30000)*180(seconds), and E = Rate2(in machine)*2(seconds). Leads to Rate(at 30000)*180(seconds) = Rate2(in machine)*2(seconds). A little more math, an you realize that the rate of exposure is 90 times faster in the machine.

90 times faster exposure of only 0.0027% of your body means that the "only three minutes" argument is true, but misleading. Such things can only happen in a culture where most people are mathematically illiterate.

To make a mathematical analogy. Assume the exposure in the air is like having a match light each second. You feel the heat of one match for 180 seconds. Then standing in such a machine is like being exposed to 36841 matches being lit 90 time a second for 2 seconds. That's 3315690 matches per second for 2 seconds. It's a 3 million plus fold increase in exposure rate.

By the way, 1 million matches lit creates a fire column 3 to 5 meters in size over 10 meters tall. For the Americans, that's 10 to 16 feet wide and over 40 feet tall. I don't want to know how how big the fire column would be for a 3.3 million match lighting experiment.

Private purchases do not waive my 4th amendment rights. They don't have to sell me a ticket if I don't agree to be searched but the government doesn't get to automatically step and search me because I want to make a purchase.
Nor do they have the right to tell the airlines to require their customers to give up their 4th amendment rights to do business.

Fastest way to defeat a terrorist is to give him a real job or business to support loved ones with out interference from corruption.

Ah, that would explain why those doctors and engineers who worked and lived in Great Britain blew up the trains a couple years back. If you do a little research on actual terrorists, you will discover that many of them are well-educated people from middle class backgrounds who have excellent job prospects.

They weren't terrorists. All of them had specific targets - people or Government buildings - in order to take those targets out: they were murderers. They were NOT targeting groups of Americans for the sake of creating terror.

They were targeting the government for the sake of creating terror in those working for the government. Both the 90s right wing terrorists and the 60s left wing terrorists.

What that means is that they had become so jaded that they thought that terrorizing the people to change the government wouldn't work, so they terrorized government officials instead.

You're right in that this isn't really 'traditional' terrorism, but traditional terrorism is incredibly stupid and only causes a backlash. If Terrorist group X starts killing civilians randomly, civilians will run to the government for help. If, OTOH, X kills government workers, government workers will quickly find other jobs, crippling the government.

But that really is 'terrorism', just aimed at government civilians instead of other civilians.

However, while that point is valid, the 9/11 attackers did the same thing. The 9/11 attacks were against the White House, the Pentagon, and...the World Trade Center. And what that means is that they appear to think...um...the military and big business run US foreign policy.

Instead of thinking of 'the US government' as a discrete entity, they saw it linked inextricably with big business, and decided they'd terrorize bis business also, who they also think are attacking them.

This is, incidentally, probably more accurate a world-view than the left- and right-wing terrorists in the US, which seem to think that domestic policy is set at Federal buildings.

Tons of people have worked out that this stupid policy is not a solution - why hasn't the government?

Because they believe their purpose is to *do something*. That's why they were elected/appointed. Not doing anything means their position is pointless, and you can't sustain a bureaucracy that way.

Simply put, nobody is going to tell the people responsible for their job that they can't find anything to do. It either makes you look incompetent, or it makes it look your position is redundant and should be eliminated.

Well I can't speak for the US, but over here (UK) the thing is, most people aren't contorting themselves in fear. The media does a fine job of convincing us we are, but seriously most people just get on with it. After the 7/7 bombings, there were rumours in the press that people would stay away from work, afraid to use the train or buses. In reality everyone just carried on as close to normal as possible. Hell, we were dealing with this crap before it was popular [wikipedia.org]. I think a lot of people convince themselves